New Challenges

Starting new activities is hard. It's hard because is painful to see how bad you are at it, making you feel uncomfortable. That’s the real reason why most new year’s resolutions don’t make it to February.

But the first issue is allowing yourself to do it. Many times we see cool activities or we know about skills that would be very helpful to us but we just don’t dare to try. We dismiss them unconsciously with “I’ve never been good at this” or “I’m not that kind of person”. But this is bullshit. If you don’t try it, even if it’s only for 30 days, you’ll never know.

After allowing yourself to do something, the most important thing is actually doing it. This is harder than it seems, because by definition when you start doing something you suck at it. And then your mind starts to play games with you, finding excuses to skip today’s session or telling you that it’s not worth doing it altogether. The key is to keep going, specially if you don’t feel like it. No one expects you to be the best, but you have to show up.

But to make it worthwhile, you have to look back every now and then to see how much you have improved since you started. Sure, you might not be even be good at it yet, but the point is that you have improved. And the great thing is that usually as you become better you also start to enjoy it.

As for me, my challenges this year are writing a post at least once a month, improving my public speaking skills, running (and training for!) my first marathon and doing Muay Thai.